[Todd Gillespie]

Different Hard dive won’t help. Probably an issue with playing high quality ProRes file. Old laptop is struggling with the bandwidth of the HQ. Obviously a newer computer might help. Although I’ve had issues with smooth playback with new laptops.

You really don’t need to show it as a ProRes, you’re not going to notice the better quality on a projector, unless it’s +$40k cinema projector.

Try exporting *SMALL* test clips to other formats, MP4 & H264 at different data rates to see if you kind find a combination that can play smoothly.

Good Luck

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

Don’t use FCP.
Play the file through QuickTime. The FireWire external will probably be a better choice than the internal.

Good Luck,
Todd

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

Hi Kevin,

Unfortunately I don’t believe there’s any way to control 2 VTRs simultaneously through FCP. Even with a AJA, BM, or other card, the user still can only control one VTR at a time. There maybe a way to splice a RS 422 cable to control 2 decks at once, but I’ve never heard of it.

If you are trying to simultaneously record to multiple devices, you can achieve that with a router/switcher and/or other hardware. (however you would not be able to do precise timecode recordings)

FWIW,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

To reiterate what Shane mentioned.

I’ve had many a render take days to process. I use Colorista by Magic Bullet and it is very render intensive.

For 3.5 hours, ALL Color Corrected, yup, sounds about right…especially on aging Apple hardware.

Unfortunately I have yet to find a plug-in that can really take advantage of the GPU, so the speed of the processors are the key for the render times.

Good Luck,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

Drifting audio usually points to a hardware issue-not import settings.
Using resources while it’s capturing can do it, low hard drive space, low disks or using the OS drive can all cause audio to drift.

However progressive is not 29.97. Should be 30p or 24p.

[Todd Gillespie]

Hi Jim,

Yes, sorry to say, not much will increase performance/render times EXPECT processors and drive speed. Since you can’t get new processors, the only other options would be faster drives…not sure what you’re using, but it might be worth a look. I did a little test on my own with some Western Digital 10k speed drives that I striped locally and saw about a 10-15% boast in render times. (but the bulk of rendering is processors)

I don’t think you’re going to find much help with plug-ins either. Unless the plug-in is written (coded) to use open GL from your graphics card, the plug-ins relies on the processors for all of the work. I have a handful of plug-in too on my VERY fast HP workstation, but the plug-ins still take a while to render.

A graphics card would be the only other thing to consider, but only if felt you could get your money’s worth.

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

Hi Jim,

I’m sure this question has been answered a bunch of times…but the short answer is-very little improvement. FCP doesn’t need a lot of RAM, the only 2 things that it would directly affect is adding more still images and graphics on the timeline without rendering. By boasting your RAM it will give FCP more RAM for photos/stills. If you do that type of work, it could be a benefit.
The other benifit would be Motion-it eats up a lot of RAM, so the more you have the better. But if you’re not doing a lot of Motion stuff, it’s a lot of money to spend for little payback.

Good Luck,
Todd

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

Hi Kevin,

I would convert the GoPro footage into ProRes. FCP doesn’t really like editing MP4 footage. Especially MP4 footage that’s multi-cam with other footage.

Also, 2GB of RAM seems a little low…

Good Luck,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

Hi Kevin,

Talk about a bad day.
Make sure you’re not trying to compress by pulling the footage straight off the discs. Copy to your hard drive.

The fact that Compressor is working for 3 hours before it fails, tells you that it’s possible, but there’s something else causing a problem.
Time to trouble shoot:
Try a smaller amount 1-2 minutes-does it work? Maybe try rendering an hour.
You could be running out of disc space. Make sure you have enough.
The HD could be going to sleep causing problems or something else starts running causing it to fail.
Try another HD.
Reboot-trash prefs.

Good Luck,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

Sorry Brian.
Didn’t see your response. Hope you solved it, but ‘nesting’ a sequence is simply placing a sequence (your edited final) into another sequence (with the NEW output settings you need) and export.

Good Luck,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production